Category: For Authors

We all know that while furiously typing out that story from our head, trying to correct spelling errors breaks our concentration and ultimately the flow of the story. We rely on our editing process, and those red underlines to sort these errors out. But what happens when you just can not remember how to spell that word? You right click, expecting your word processor to help you out, but it does not provide the answer of how to spell that word you are looking for. You try Googling, but it seems even they do not know how to spell that word… You are just not able to figure out how that word is spelt.

You do not want to have to re-write the sentence or use another word, it will break the flow of the paragraph, but it looks like you will have no option!

Stop! Take a deep breath and see the image below, with the help of some Grammar Experts and graphical wizards, the following image was created to help you figure out how to spell that word!

The first book of the Author Guide Series has just become available—and you can get it right now, for FREE. The first in a series of books dedicated to helping Authors with all aspects of self-publishing, this book is focused on building your list. We have all heard the saying ‘The Money Is In The List’, but building your list is not only time consuming, but incredibly difficult if you do not do it properly, and to make matters worse, you might end up having to start your list from scratch if you make the wrong decisions in the beginning!

Book 1 in the Author Guide Series (How to build your opt-in list, using free tools) focuses on list building for authors and ensures you avoid the pit falls most new authors make, and ensures that you start creating your list correctly from day one! No re-doing, re-verifying or mismanagement of lists that end up costing you time and money. Best of all, the book is focused on free tools to help you do this, no need to buy expensive software to successfully utilize the advice in this book.

If you already have your list, this book contains enough golden nuggets to provide you with tips and tools to provide new ideas and avenues you might not be utilizing and will help you maintain and organize your current list.

While focused on specifically on list building for authors, many of the options supplied can be utilized for other types of list building initiatives.

My advice? Get the book! Right now it is being offered for FREE, so you have nothing to lose, only tons and tons to gain!

I wrote another post on The Roads of Luhonono – Legend of The East Road (Book#1) before it was launched. Depicting “The amazing adventures of three would-be adventurers and their quest to find a mysterious princess”, this Middle Grade Fictional book should not be missed.If you were not able to get your pre-release copy, I have great news, you can now get The Roads of Luhonono at a 35% discount!

The discount is only valid between 7 November (yes, I know I am late!) and 21 November 2015.

In order to get your discounted copy of this book, click the link below to go to the Smashwords website and enter the Coupon Code (LK85D) at the time of purchase to receive your 35% discount.

Finding time to write is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of being a new author, especially if you are working. If you have not yet completed your first book, it is all the harder. The doubts creep in, and you wonder: “Am I wasting my precious time?”

Most of us write because we enjoy it. I love getting lost in a story, thinking up scenes and ‘trials’ to build my characters. This is the fun part. I can lie in bed and be entertained for hours by my imagination. The hard part is writing it down, taking those scenes from your mind and typing them out. It takes time, often time we steal from other places. It is all too easy to simply neglect this step and carry on with life. In my life, there is always something else I could be doing (if you saw the state of my house, you would have no option but to agree with me!) But if we fall into this trap, our stories will only ever be a brief moment of entertainment that gets lost in the jumble of our everyday lives. Even if you never want to publish, that great story you had in your mind could be captured and read to your children when they are old enough. Something of yourself they can take and treasure, and a reminder to yourself at a later date of times past. Each story has its own feelings and emotions, and for me, writing is a way to capture these feelings and relive them at a later time. I often read the story and see not what is written in the words, but the emotions and moments that fill the spaces between the lines.

I have unfortunately been neglecting my writing lately. Even though I really enjoy writing, and it helps me to relieve some of the emotions I am feeling, something else always seems to be more important-or I just feel like I am too tired. I am a firm believer in ‘you can make time if you really want to’, and I know that if I was not just writing in my spare time, and if I had definite deadlines-that I was held accountable for by a third party-I would manage to find the time to write.

The trick is, how to get people to hold you accountable if you miss a deadline? Many of the successful Authors have a large following that hound them for their next book, ensuring that the Author does the necessary to stick to their deadlines. The thing is you need to write in order to build your deadline demanding readers. So, while you are building your reader base, how do you get that little prod when you do not meet your deadlines to ensure you do not succumb to every other excuse not to put your pen to paper?

What if I told you I had found a way to do this? Not only that, while you are motivated to meet your deadlines, you will also be exposing your work to readers and even have subscribers just waiting to read your work? How is that for incentive! But that is not all, what if you could get all the above and then also be PAID for each person that subscribes to your story? Too good to be true? I thought so too, until I received a little tweet, and was introduced to Channillo.

Basically put, Channillo allows authors to submit what they call a series, and their readers (who pay a monthly subscription) can then choose which series they would like to read. The Author receives a portion of the site’s earnings relative to the number of people who are subscribed to any of their series.

A series can be similar to your typical TV series, that has no ending (a great way to build up a readership and explore different story ideas by inserting them as mini plots into your ongoing saga). A series could also be your book in chapters, with each chapter being an ‘episode’ in your series. You can even submit a group of poems, with each poem being an ‘episode’. As Channillo’s subscribers pay to view the content, your work in progress will not be available for free on the web, so your future sales will not be hampered by a freely available version.

When you submit your series to Channillo, you choose how often you will update your series. If you do not update it on schedule, or not at all, it can be removed from Channillo (along with your potential income). They will send you reminders before they remove your series, so you do get that all important prod to write.

This gives you an incentive to ensure you write often. Each episode needs to be uploaded and provided to your waiting subscribers on schedule, thus breaking your book down into manageable pieces until it is a completed masterpiece.

I am sure, like me, you can see the potential in such an arrangement. The drawback? Once your series is approved, you need to subscribe to their site as a reader, but considering all you could be gaining from the arrangement, the cost is negligible. You also then get to read ongoing work from other Authors and who knows, you might learn a thing or two from the process of watching another Author’s work in progress.

If you are an Author who battles to find time to write (in fact any writer can benefit from this service!), I would recommend you visit Channillo (Click to view the Channillo site), and have a look at what they offer. I will be heading there to submit my series to them as soon as I have made up my mind which of the many works in progress I want to commit to finishing.